Neighbors, First, I'd like to thank the people of west philly for turning their backs to the FOCP! The last FOCP elections were not legitimate because you refused to pay FOCP!
(FOCP elections: FOCP had only 8 of their people at their annual elections, while the room was filled with frightened flea market vendors. The FOCP leadership quickly voted by acclamation only, after not a single person agreed to join their gang. When I discovered the illegitimate election by chasing Fran around the room for the numbers, West and Chance arrogantly claimed that no one made a quorum call before the vote. How can someone make a quorum call when the voting policy is changed to hide the lack of members in a crowded room??? Chance and West can always meet and use that ridiculous argument to screw the membership. Had the ballots been passed out, of course, the assembled public would have known that no one outside of their gang supports the FOCP! The election was not legitimate!!) The FOCP claim, that the "community" supports their leaders' plans to secretly redesign the park, is absurd. The FOCP members don't even support them! But our work as citizens is not done, and we must proactively stop the FOCP back room deal to redesign Clark Park A! (Later, we should move against the FOCP 501 c3 status) IMPORTANT: FOCP gang meeting and dog/ pony show, March 10, 7 PM, Griffith Hall. (For 3 years, FOCP leaders have prohibited a one minute statement by me against the closed "planning commitee" process. Many witnesses have seen FOCP leaders interrupt my written statement at 3 consecutive public dog and pony performances about the park redesign.) The high maintenance projects UCD/FOCP/SHCA have designed to use up large amounts of open space in park A are not popular among our neighbors (fountain, new garden, etc.) From my experience, studying the first attempt to redesign Clark Park, the vast majority of neighbors have always been pleased with Clark Park, and view the diversity of users as a strength of our community!! Studying Clark Park allows an individual to see why our neighborhood was a great place to live despite years of negative propaganda from the U of P powerful propaganda machine. The most used neighborhood park in the city reflected our diverse culture. Neighbors, the secret planning committee of FOCP, which has been making back room deals with UCD, is a secret because they know that their high maintenance redesign would be unpopular among the neighbors! (While Nutter is advancing a regressive property tax, the entire city will be outraged to learn about the state and city resources going to a fountain in Clark Park. ) The claim that “planning” committee members should be unidentified before their neighbors, as a “confidentiality” issue, is complete rubbish. FOCP can not defend a closed secret unidentified committee in a fair debate. I have made an extensive public record of the outrageous FOCP processes over the past several years to ram this redesign through while actively excluding most community voices outside of the hand picked group. (All of my annoying public calls for the time, date, and location of exclusive meetings might seem more important to some of you now!) We can win an injunction to stop the park closure, if we sue the Department of Recreation and expose these shenanigans to the city wide media. I'll pay the initial filing fees if people will mobilize and we can get a lawyer to check the filing!! I'll do leg work if the people of this community want to save Clark park and break this iron triangle once and for all! I can’t do it alone. We, the people, have the right to view all deliberations if we make Clark Park a public park again-including the secret planning committee deliberations. Important summary: The Department of Recreation is improperly giving control of the park to unaccountable FOCP leaders and UCD aka Penn. The park stakeholders and the rights of the general public have been harmed by the closed, secret, master plan, steering committee; now called the planning committee of FOCP. THIS UNACCEPTABLE CLOSED PROCESS HAS BEEN ONGOING FOR 7 OR 8 YEARS!!!!! We can’t possibly save our democracy if we can’t take back Clark Park! A victory here in West Philly would spread across and empower the citizens of this city! If West Philly can be won back, Baltimore, Chicago, and the country can be won back for the people too!!! We need to draw the line and win back Clark Park! (Washington's win in Trenton came when the revolutionary war was nearly lost like our democracy. The military gains were slight to nothing but the symbolism empowered the revolution.) Sincerely, Glenn PS: It's not just that these redesigns would be unpopular. It is the corporate process that MUST be exposed and DEFEATED. As much as we love the park, it is the corporate anti-democratic process that threatens us! ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the list named "UnivCity." To unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>.
